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Let’s talk about … gender dysphoria!

Actually I always thought that I just started to feel dysphoric about my body when I’ve figured out that I’m trans. When I was a kid I didn’t know the terms transgender and dysphoria. I simply thought that I was just weird or that something was wrong with me. Now that I know, many things I experienced in the past make sense to me.

I always hated it when people called me by my birthname. I hated this name. I never had a conncection to it. So I was called by a nickname.
When people referred to me as girl I felt irritated. Everybody told me that I was a girl but I didn’t felt that way. I had no words to describe what I was feeling. So I decided myself genderless. I wasn’t a girl but I wasn’t a boy either.

I think shortly before puberty I experienced body dysphoria for the first time. When we talked in school about the human anatomy down there I was disgusted by the female one. The region “down there” had make me always felt uncomfortable. Uncomfortable and irritating, that was the feeling that always had been with me.
When I was 14 puberty hit me (yes, I was a late bloomer). It was weird how the girls in my class were talking about bra sizes. I wished I would have never get some. If I repeat myself now, please forgive me. I just try to summarize my experiences.
In hospital there was a girl who got the ovaries removed and I felt jealous. I told the doctors they should remove mine too because I won’t need them and that they don’t belong to me. Of course they didn’t. They probably thought I was mentally ill and I got the “diagnosis” mental disorder, without specifying what kind of mental disorder I have. They literally told my mom “We don’t know exactly. Your daughter is … different.”

When my brother started to grow muscles in puberty and I didn’t, I was upset. I stole his dumbbells to workout with them but it didn’t work well. I felt disappointed, jealous and the thought that something was wrong with me became clearer. Still I hadn’t found a word to describe my feelings. I felt broken and got depressed. For many years I thought I had depression from the experiences in hospital and because my left leg is paralysed. Now I reconsider the thought and came to the conclusion it might comes more from being transgender. I mean, I processed to live with my tumour disease and that my leg will stay paralysed but I’m still depressed. The process haven’t solved my depression, or the irritating feeling I experienced all my life.

Without my disease and if we would have talked about gender in school I’m sure, I would have figured out earlier that I’m trans.